Gabriel was drawn in to the most recent Tiger Woods offering by (among other things) the promise of its asynchronous tournament structure, as well as its Play The Pros thingy. In an attempt to savor said tournaments, he played a full round - checking in a score he felt was a manifestation of excellence. He was surprised to learn that he had come in somewhere around eighteen-thousandth place.

That's the nature of "leaderboard" style competitions, a predatory context I tend to avoid, because I'm already quite acquainted with my own mediocrity, thanks! I don't need it reinforced with visual aids.

Gabriel has a different relationship to it. His feeling is (more or less) that if your golf game allows you to shoot thirty under par, it's probably not a simulation of golf. He's not sure what it is, but it's not that. Tournaments that don't normalize player statistics aren't skill competitions, to him - they're time competitions, measuring not the quality of your leisure hours but the volume. He has the former. The latter is in increasingly short supply.

I put in a beta application on the Tiger Woods Online site, because I think that game is at least a recognition of the problem they've got. With their RPG derived stat twiddling and their annual release system - this last one wasn't even that, clocking in at a gestational nine months - they're already operating an MMO. But it's an MMO with row upon row of hooked teeth, because every time you buy this year's model all your work in the previous iteration explodes.

It's actually Gabriel who had the harrowing experience of competing against hydraulic assassins, and not myself, but with dialogue like this Tycho seemed like a better fit. The reality, though, is that through continuous exposure, Gabriel's mode of speech has begun to adopt an appealing, angular menace. Yesterday, he described his Chicken Bacon Ranch as "malebolgian," though it's possible he was making fun of me. More than possible. Actually, yes.

With Jim Darkmagic having been obliterated in the first round of voting, he has been removed from the island. Here is the second and final round of voting, which is sure to be close, so don't recline in your chair confident in the work of others. It really could go either way, and if you want it to go your way, the process is very straightforward.

(CW)TB out.  

in his better days

I don't know why I keep buying Tiger Woods games every year. I suppose because it's the only golf game available. I am always instantly frustrated by it and I end up putting it aside after just a couple days. The main problem I have with the game I think is the way your skills work. Tiger is essentially an RPG. That is to say as you play, your skills improve and you get better equipment. That's just not what I want from a golf game. Starting Tiger Woods is like walking on to the golf course wearing vendor trash and everyone else is in their tier 8 gear. You can not compete unless you put the time in. What I want is a golf game that's more like Halo or any other shooter. What I mean is that everyone has essentially the same character and what determins the winner is the players skill.

I want to see everyone start with a character that has the same basic skills. Then give everyone the same number of points that they can invest in their character to improve things like driving or putting. Then that's it, no more points no more stat upgrades. Now you're talking about creating a custom build for your character and then matching your skills with that build up against everyone else. Immagine if everytime you tackled a guy in Madden your players got stronger. Then immagine you could buy footballs that flew further or were easier to catch. Sure some people might like it but most fans would say "this isn't football". Well that is essentially how Tiger Woods works and I guess I'm just tired of it.

On the other hand I picked up Red Faction yesterday and ended up playing it until nearly 1:30 in the morning. Holy fuck this game is good. My favorite part of any open world game is always just tooling around and causing trouble. Well Red Faction is literally all about tooling around and causing trouble. In GTA if you drive out to a random warehouse and start some shit, you're not progressing the game. In Red Faction you are rewarded for pretty much anything you decide to do. Say you're driving around in your sapce truck and you see a big mining facility. You jack a giant tractor and then drive it straight into the main building. Then you jump out and start blowing shit up and killing guys. Congradulations you just earned a bunch of scrap that you can use to upgrade your gear and you helped liberate this section of the world.

I actually quit playing at about midnight and then made the mistake of deciding to check out the multi before I went to bed. An hour and half later I had to force myself to turn the box off and go to sleep. Even now writing this all I want to do is go home and boot it back up.

We have decided to hold one more vote, this time based on Automata vs. Lookouts. The complaint was that Jim Darkmagic was stealing votes that might have gone to Lookouts. I guess he was sort of the Ross Perot of the election. So here is a link to a new survey. We'll keep this one up through the weekend to give you guys plenty of time to vote.

-Gabe out